Memoir of a Soldier is a performance/exhibition at the Belfast Exposed Gallery by Israeli soldier-turned-choreographer Daniel Vais.

Subtitled 'How my country manipulated and used me to fight my neighbours and how I learned to transform hate into pure love’, it documents Vais's experience in the Israeli army - in which he spent three years and saw active service in various missions - and how he 'mastered the art of being invisible and learned to transform hate into pure and unconditional love'. Vais subsequently spent time in an Israeli jail 'and had to learn the art of forgiveness in order to keep sane,' he explains.

Daniel Vais was previously based in Ireland, where he worked with the Limerick dance troupe, Daghda which introduced the innovative Mamuska Nights - a kind of artistic open-house that has since spread internationally.

In Limerick, Vais set up the dance troupe Lovespotters, featuring performers with Down Syndrome, and conducted a number of successful tours with the troupe.

He followed this with a festival of 'outsiders' art and dance, before relocating to London. I interviewed him in 2008 during a rather delightfully quirky solo dance tour on Cape Clear, an island off the south west of Ireland. From that article:

Anybody can be a dancer, he believes. Everywhere he goes, he seeks to lead people out of the physical and emotional cul-de-sacs into which their inhibitions and life experiences lead them. He leads them literally – he draws people out of the watching audience and encourages them to dance with him. It doesn’t necessarily make for good performance (in a conventional sense) – but it makes for intriguing social dynamics. And, Vais believes, it can make for positive social development. He calls it “social choreography”. “I set the conditions for things to happen,” he says. He blurs the boundaries between high art, outreach and avant-garde experimentation.

Vais's Belfast talk, with accompanying 'dance ritual', takes place at 1-3pm on Wednesday, March 24, as part of the gallery's two month exhibition, Exchange Mechanism, curated by Raimi Gbadamosi. (Download the programme here. More on Daniel Vais here.)

During this time, the gallery 'will operate as an alternative political space, where visitors encounter set works, complicated by ‘disruptions’,' they say. 'The intention is to present visitors with the opportunity to engage with ideas; explain, interpret and respond to the work in as many ways as possible, in the context of political debate and multiple channels of exchange:  artist, viewer, art; public, politics, ideas; visitor, city, gallery. Simultaneously functioning as a debating chamber, an installation of esoteric and popular media and an archive display, Exchange Mechanism seeks to challenge the abstraction of spontaneous public, political and artistic encounters from everyday life.'

The concept is inspired by the 'increasing regulation of public space, restrictions on mobility, and routine invasions of personal privacy', leading to 'an interrogation of the demands and denials of freedom alongside artists’ responsibility to actively engage with the political'.

'We want people to get involved as speakers, organisers, activists and volunteers,' they say. The exhibition runs till April 9.

Belfast Exposed was founded in 1983 as a community photography initiative, and now functions as a gallery for contemporary photography with an emphasis on commissioning and publication of new work. It holds a community photography archive (with a portion of this available online) and runs an extensive educational outreach network.

See, for example, the photos in the Parades series of the archive.

Owen McCafferty's new play for Belfast's Lyric Theatre, The Absence of Women, is set in a bleak London hostel, but is a play about Belfast, writes Pádraic Whyte for Irish Theatre Magazine.

It is 'about the people who were forced to leave its geographic location but bound to carry with them memories of their home place,' he says. 'McCafferty’s thought-provoking new play brings us on a series of journeys with the protagonists, Ger (Karl Johnson) and Iggy (Ian McElhinney), from their public pasts and the contribution they made to the building of British transport systems, to their private memories of their youth and the burdens which they are now left with.

'Themes of masculinity, silence and invisibility are to the fore of the play. Ger tells Dotty that “Belfast men don’t dance”, a line his father used, and offers her a drink instead, while Iggy is forced to leave Belfast because he does not conform to the apparent norms of society. Both men may have lived the majority of their lives away from Belfast, yet they have carried with them the experiences and memories of their formative years, and the change of geographical locale has done little to change their lives.

'In recent years, the lives of Irish navvy workers in England have received much attention on stage and screen, and there is a feeling that we have heard many of Ger and Iggy’s stories before. However, McCafferty’s play does add a specifically Belfast dimension to these representations. As Ger longs to return to Belfast for one last drink, he wonders if the city has changed. The Belfast that Iggy and Ger left had particular notions about masculinity, the consumption of alcohol, the treatment of women, and cultures of silence – how does that world compare to a contemporary Belfast? Perhaps, in this linking of past and present, McCafferty raises the most pertinent question of the piece.'

The full review is here. Details of the play, which ends on Saturday February 27, are here. More on McCafferty here.

The Day the Immigrants Left was a novel and provocative 'life swap'-style documentary that screened on BBC1 on Wednesday in which native British people who were unemployed were invited to take jobs typically held by immigrants. (I didn't see it, alas.)

The presenter, Evan Davis (pictured), wrote about it in the Times, here. The documentary was reviewed in the Guardian here and the Independent here.

It was watched by 5.3 million viewers and a 21% share in the 9pm hour, reported the Guardian.

Evan Davis told the BBC:

'The programme started really with a hypothetical alternative world in which you ask 'what would society be like if we didn't have the immigrants here?'

'The conceit of it is to take immigrants out of Wisbech and to see how life continues there. We hear a lot of people saying that the immigrants have stolen our jobs, that there aren't any opportunities for Wisbech people.

'There are mixed results in the experiments we've done," he said.

'Some, you could see that the British workers were up to the job and could do it. And quite a few where you could say that the British workers didn't put their backs into it, didn't want to put their backs into it, or couldn't put their backs into it.

'What's undoubtedly the case is that a lot of these jobs are back-breaking jobs, and there is not a lot of demand by British workers to do these.'

Readers in the UK can watch the doc on the BBC's iPlayer here.

The film was made by Leopard Films.

Latin America Week takes place from April 19 to 24, and amongst the events will be a photographic exhibition on 'The role of Older People in Food Sovereignty in Latin America and Ireland'.

The exhibition is being curated by the Latin American Solidarity Centre (LASC) and Age Action Ireland, and will be displayed at the Irish Aid Volunteer and Information Centre, Dublin during April.

The curators have issued a call for photos for the exhibition, inviting those interested to send photos to  lascphotoexhibition10@gmail.com by March 15 (postal entries to Mara Sánchez, LASC, 5 Merrion Row, Dublin 2).

Entries are required to follow the principles of Dóchas Code of Conduct of Images (download pdf here). Dóchas is the umbrella organisation for Irish non-governmental development & aid organisations. See also the Dóchas report of a conference on how African and developing countries are portrayed in the media, here.

For more on 'food sovereignty', see here and also the LASC powerpoint on the issue, here. Upcoming events at the Irish Aid centre are here.

There's been an interesting discussion recently on the listserve run by the Global Investigative Journalism Network on online media in Africa and developing countries. To subscribe to the list, send an email with "subscribe GLOBAL-L your name" in the body of the mail to listserv@lists.reporter.org. I have edited some excerpts below.

Rosebell Kagumire writes:

Though there are still hurdles, this doesn't mean African newspaper businesses should be seated idle waiting for a miracle of internet access for all for them to think of venturing into online media. Most media in Africa make efforts to include the youth in the normal newspapers, even if this group is not likely to buy a newspaper. However, they are the group that are educated, and who bother to access the internet. Newspapers are still stuck in age-old strategies and have yet to wake up.

I am in Costa Rica and get most breaking news from friends. It is frustrating that I have to wait for about 12 hours for a newspaper in Kampala to upload a story on their website. Some newspapers have started blogs for almost hourly updates and improved their online opinion pages to try to get the public interested. Others only have websites that carry months old news.
Much as there are still challenges for online news businesses, the owners aren't using even the limited access most countries have. I don't expect the African online media to necessarily take on the shape of the European or American way but we can use other advantages that are there in our communities.

I haven't seen any news outlet that has tried to use the wide spread of mobile phones and online news. Radios in my country have gained a lot from this because you can find more than 10 mobile phones in each village and this means information will be available faster. The African media market simply hasn't woken up to take advantage of the internet age in the best way.

Eugene N Nforngwa, editor of the Standard Tribune newspaper, Yaounde, Cameroon, writes:

One thing we cannot lose sight of is that online journalism is the future of African newspapers. The current skepticism is similar to that which followed the arrival of the mobile phone. We all know that this story is different today, wherever you are on the continent. With respect to many areas of innovation, Africa can be expected to experience huge technological bypasses. Take television for example. Most channels in my country are ignoring relay transmitters and hooking up on satellite and are able to broadcast to the entire world from day one.

One of the biggest challenges facing most of Africa's print media is infrastructure and cost. In Cameroon, there are only two printing presses serving hundreds of newspapers. Magazine publishers have to take their work to places like UAE and India to have good quality work. On top of all of that, sales are generally low and are set to keep falling, thanks partly to poor means of circulation.

Online publications offer both huge cuts in cost and wider reach. There is a huge market for African news in the Diaspora. This is the best way to attract younger readerships. It also offers a great way of bypassing the muzzling that is still very rampant in some of our counties. What is lacking presently is real investment in online journalism.

Eugene Nforngwa blogs here and tweets here.

Tobi Soniyi writes:

The fact that online journalism succeeded in Europe and America does not mean it would succeed in Africa, not to mention individual African countries. That is where the problem is. Literacy level differs from one country to another. In Nigeria, a lot of people buy papers because they identify with the region where they are published. A Hausa Fulani who cannot read and write will still buy a Daily Trust newspaper.

In Africa you pay heavily to get access to the internet and you also want them to pay to access a newspaper website? You are wasting your time.

Drew Sullivan of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project at the Center for Investigative Reporting, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, writes:

A large number of editors are not setting the standards necessary to build credibility with the public in many countries. It is worthless to use new technologies to enlarge your reach unless you succeed in dealing with this basic cornerstone of journalism: credibility. Otherwise you just turn off a larger circle of readers. We should all work hard -- much harder than we are working -- at building credibility. And that starts with accuracy and fairness in every single story.

I read media around the world.  We have a crisis in credibility in the developing world.  If we want to survive in a world of expanding information sources, I think we must resolve this first before we worry about much else.

Agenda Aloysius, a Masters student in Global Journalism at the University of Orebro, Sweden, writes:

The majority of African media and the rest of the media in developing nations need to build confidence in readers so as to consolidate present readership and attract more. Afterwards, they can look forward to expanding the media. Some are making frantic efforts on this.

The problem may also revolve around reading culture. Some traditional media may have a high readership not necessarily because of very good reporting but because a reading culture had been established in those societies and people can afford those papers or have more access to internet. This culture spans over centuries.

It is extremely important that editors in Africa and other developing nations make critical efforts to get more readers. I am from Cameroon, where this is not the case. News is just what happens by accident or what is said during press conferences and the details which some call "investigative" are often based on rumours which may not be false though can hardly be proven.

Aloysius blogs here.

The latest FOMACS radio documentary is now available to listen to or podcast at RTE's Documentary on One site. Neltah Chadamoyo's programme, Neltah Tells a Love Story, was produced in the context of the FOMACS radio mentoring programme Having Your Voice Heard.

In the programme, Neltah tells the story of her sister, Melody, and a man named Taurai, growing up together in Zimbabwe. Taurai was born albino and was taunted in the street. When he first asked Melody out, she refused, but her cousin 'blackmailed' her into accepting. She fell in love with Taurai, and shared in the abuse he received for being different. They also shared a life of laughs, cooking and gardening. They came to Ireland and had a daughter, Siobhán. Then, in 2008, Melody and Siobhán lost Taurai… Neltah's story recounts their joys and struggles.

The programme was broadcast in the Curious Ear slot last Saturday. Colin Murphy's short documentary for FOMACS, on immigrant participation in the local elections, was previously broadcast in this slot, and can be found here.

Promise and Unrest, a film by Alan Grossman and Áine O'Brien of FOMACS, premiered at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival on Friday last. The film was previewed on radio on Arena on Radio One, and Áine O'Brien was interviewed last week on Radio One's Drivetime (the archive is here, but does not appear to be up to date at time of writing). A preview of the film can be seen on the film's website, here.

The film gives a rare and intimate insight into the lives of a migrant family in Ireland and their home country - in this case, the Philippines. Shot over five years, it follows Noemi Barredo, a care worker who left the Philippines in search of work when her daughter, Gracelle, was just seven months. Gracelle was left with Noemi's parents, as Noemi sought work first in Malaysia and later in Ireland. Noemi's earnings provided for her extended family in her absence, amongst other things building them a villa that contrasts sharply with the small Ranelagh bedsit in which Noemi lives in Ireland. Eventually, Noemi brought Gracelle to live with her in Ireland.

Promise and Unrest is ethnographic filmmaking, allowing the story of these people's lives to unfold with time, and with the sometimes chaotic and sometimes mundane pace of real life. While it is ostensibly about Noemi and Gracelle - both of whom emerge as strong and compelling protagonists - it could also be read as an oblique commentary on Irish culture and society. And of course the film has much to say - though never didactically - on the global regime regulating migrant labour.

The filmmakers (who are colleagues in FOMACS) are now looking to the next stage of distribution. At a Q&A after the film, Áine said they intended to develop an education pack to accompany the film in outreach work. I'll keep readers posted.

A short note on the website: the video is embedded using the popular alternative to YouTube, Vimeo. This is much the same as YouTube to use, but is higher quality. Vimeo only allows uploading of original material, and so has a more tangible community orientation than the more chaotic YouTube. For those who enjoy plunging into this kind of tech talk, there's a thorough comparison of various video sharing sites here.

The Communication Initiative network, which has been cited regularly here, has put together an online resource (or collection of resources) on crisis intervention and development in Haiti, with a focus on the communications aspects.

As they say: 'We want to provide some connections for people and organisations hoping to relate to organisations in Haiti - when communications become possible. Plus, we all know from times like this that spaces to communicate, debate, and struggle with the meaning and implications of are vitally important. We have created these spaces through The CI and include links to these spaces here below.'

The resource is here.

In Bangkok’s slums, most homes have a colour television—the average number is 1.6 per household. Almost all have fridges, and two-thirds have a CD player, washing machine and a mobile phone. Half of them have a home telephone, video player and motorcycle. This is from a 2003 UN report The Challenge of Slums, and is cited in a challenging article by environmentalist Stewart Brand (a man with an intriguing track record) in the latest issue of Prospect: How Slums Can Save the Planet.

The article is a paean to cities and their potential for both lifting people out of poverty (even in slum cities), and for boosting energy conservation and environmental protection. Brand references the UN study above:

The reversal of opinion about fast-growing cities, previously considered bad news, began with The Challenge of Slums, a 2003 UN-Habitat report. The book’s optimism derived from its groundbreaking fieldwork: 37 case studies in slums worldwide. Instead of just compiling numbers and filtering them through theory, researchers hung out in the slums and talked to people. They came back with an unexpected observation: “Cities are so much more successful in promoting new forms of income generation, and it is so much cheaper to provide services in urban areas, that some experts have actually suggested that the only realistic poverty reduction strategy is to get as many people as possible to move to the city.”

Brand concludes:

Fast-growing cities are far from an unmitigated good. They concentrate crime, pollution, disease and injustice as much as business, innovation, education and entertainment. The recent earthquake in Haiti demonstrates the danger of slum buildings. But if they are overall a net good for those who move there, it is because cities offer more than just jobs. They are transformative: in the slums, as well as the office towers and leafy suburbs, the progress is from hick to metropolitan to cosmopolitan, and with it everything the dictionary says that cosmopolitan means: multicultural, multiracial, global, worldly-wise, well travelled, experienced, unprovincial, cultivated, cultured, sophisticated, suave, urbane.

And just as this was true during the industrial revolution, so the take-off of cities will be the dominant economic event of the first half of this century too. It will involve huge infrastructural stresses on energy and food supply. Vast numbers of people will begin climbing the energy ladder from smoky firewood and dung cooking fires to diesel-driven generators for charging batteries, then to 24/7 grid electricity. They are also climbing the food ladder, from subsistence farms to cash crops of staples like rice, corn, wheat and soy to meat—and doing so in a global marketplace. Environmentalists who try to talk people out of it will find the effort works about as well as trying to convince them to stay in their villages. Peasant life is over, unless catastrophic climate change drives us back to it. For humanity, the green city is our future.

This week's Humanitarian Heads Up e-newsletter from Reuters AlertNet also looks at urbanisation.

Aid agencies will have to get urbanised, they report:

More and more vulnerable populations will settle on the outskirts of towns and cities across the globe in the next few years, a new report has found. Published by Humanitarian Futures Programme at King's College, London, and the Feinstein International Centre at Tufts University in the US called Humanitarian Horizons: A Practitioners' Guide to the Future, is one of two new reports highlighting the need for humanitarian efforts to be focus on the needs of the urban poor who have been largely been overlooked as the aid world concentrates more on rural development. The other is the World Bank's flagship Development Report 2010. About 810 million people already live in city slums, battling overcrowding, insecure tenure, landslides, flooding, poor sanitation, unsafe housing, inadequate nutrition and poor health. Humanitarian agencies will need to revise their mandates as emergency needs in urban areas have not been addressed. The World Bank report also examines the impact of climate change on urban populations. "Low-elevation coastal zones at risk from rising sea levels and coastal surges are home to about 600 million people globally, and 15 of the world's 20 megacities," it says. 

Promise and Unrest is the latest film by Alan Grossman and Áine O'Brien of FOMACS, and premieres at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival in Dublin on February 19 at 9pm at Cineworld, Parnell Street. There's a trailer here.

The film is narrated by mother and daughter, Noemi and Gracelle Barredo, from the Philippines. Separated from her daughter Gracelle at seven months, Noemi Barredo left the Philippines for work in Malaysia to support her parents and extended family, before arriving in Ireland in 2000.

According to the filmmakers, Promise and Unrest is an intimate portrayal of a migrant woman performing caregiving and long-distance motherhood, while assuming the responsibility of sole provider for her family back in the Philippines.

Dublin may be a long way from Noemi’s hometown of Babatngon, yet she retains a sharp eye on the welfare of her family, attentive to a range of small businesses she has financed, paying for the education of her daughter and son, medication for her terminally ill father and her sister’s nursing degree.

Through the camera lens, the film captures the everyday intricacies of Noemi and Gracelle’s relationship, their reunion in Ireland and the beginnings o a domestic life together in the same country for the first time.

Tickets from the festival website or at (01) 6877974. The festival runs from February 18 to 28. We'll take a closer look at the programme here next week.

The Office of the Minister for Integration has been busy sending press releases on recent initiatives and reports. Here is a quick note on a few of these.

The Canal Communities Intercultural Strategy for Youth Work

The Canal Communities are the Bluebell, Rialto, Kilmainham, Inchicore, Islandbridge areas of south west inner city Dublin. This area is one of the most ethnically diverse in the country, with 17% of residents from minority ethnic backgrounds. The Canal Communities Intercultural Centre, running since 2004, works on integration in the area - in their words, 'an integration which celebrates difference but recognises our common desire to be respected parts of a dynamic, responsible, creative and caring community'. The centre has recently published a strategy for youth work, which was launched by the Minister for Integration, John Curran TD. Curran said he was 'very aware of the importance of focussing on younger immigrants and activities which encourage their greater participation in the community. Ensuring that migrant youth reach their full potential and feel part of the community is crucial not only for first generation migrants but, as international experience has shown, in some cases for second and third generations.'

In the Front Line of Integration: Young People Managing Migration to Ireland

A total of 169 young people aged 15-18 took part in this national study through participation in focus groups across the country. The study covered issues such as adjustment to life in Ireland, school life, links with their cultural heritage, relations with Irish young people, work and further study in Ireland and their experience of racism.

According to Minister John Curran, who launched the report, 'We can see from the research that many of the young people interviewed are ambitious and highly motivated to avail of the opportunities which Ireland offers them.'

Curran also noted that the demand for integration initiatives had not fallen with the drop off in immigration and rise in return-migration. 'In fact, at post primary level, the numbers increased slightly, he said. 'It is clear that the need for integration is not diminishing and reports like this remain important.'

The project was funded through the European Integration Fund and run by the Trinity Immigration Initiative and the Integration and Social Inclusion Centre. Download it here.

The OECD Report on Migrant Education in Ireland

The report presents policy options designed to respond to the main challenges, which the OECD has identified for Ireland in five key areas:

Early childhood education and care
School – primary and post-primary
Partnership and engagement – particularly with parents
Access to quality education
Data collection for evaluation and feedback.

John Curran said the report would inform the development of the Intercultural Education Strategy expected this spring.

The documentary film about life in the Irish accommodation centre for asylum seekers at Mosney, Seaview, is now available to buy on DVD/download. Seaview had a good run on the festival circuit and was nominated in last year's IFTAs (Irish Film and Television Awards) for best documentary. It also had a theatrical release in Germany. It was directed by Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley.

According to Nick Gogan, 'Every Irish person remembers spending holidays at Mosney and it's incredible to see this familiar setting that still seems to resonate with so many of our pasts now used for a different purpose. The residents of Mosney each have their own story to tell, from the tragic to the heartwarming.'

As one resident of the centre says in the film: 'Do you know what it means to leave everything you have as a human being and come to a country where you are a total stranger? I mean, it's not something you just wake up and decide to do.' 

You can watch a trailer here, listen to an interview with the filmmakers here, download press materials here, and buy the film on DVD or download from Indiepix, here.

International Mother Tongue Day may be a mouthful, but it's an interesting initiative to celebrate linguistic diversity. It will be celebrated this year in Tallaght, Dublin, on Saturday February 20, by a new group, Bilingual Forum Ireland.

They will bring researchers, teachers, families and community workers together on the 20th, from 10am to 1pm at the Red Rua Art Centre in Tallaght (just by the Tallaght Luas stop) for a plenary session followed by the presentation of projects and a discussion.

Bilingual Forum Ireland is a group of researchers from universities across Ireland that aims to raise awareness about bilingual issues. They offer free information sessions and workshops and seminars on bilingualism to parents, teachers and community groups, and have an online forum. Amongst the discussions online is one on foreign-language playgroups, with details of various facilities for children in various languages.

Contact them at bilingualforumireland[at]gmail.com (replace [at] with @ - this is a convention to minimise spam).

A new analysis of the direct provision system of accommodation for asylum seekers in Ireland will be launched on February 18. ‘One Size Doesn’t Fit All’: Legal analysis of the direct provision and dispersal system in Ireland, 10 years on is published by FLAC (Free Legal Advice Centres) and updates and elaborates on some of the key concerns about the system of direct provision and dispersal identified in FLAC's 2003 publication, Direct Discrimination? (download here). The new report will examine the system of direct provision in the context of government policy, domestic law and international human rights standards.

The launch will be accompanied by a screening of the digital stories Living in Direct Provision, produced by FOMACS with Integrating Ireland and the Refugee Information Service. The launch is at 11am on the 18th in Buswell’s Hotel, Dublin. Contact campaigns[at]flac.ie.

The launch is also intended to mark the UN World Day of Social Justice on 20 February.

Incidentally, FLAC has recently launched an online audio archive to mark its 40th anniversary, for which I conducted a series of interviews with a range of people involved in FLAC over the years, including some of the founder members.

The Loon Lounge is a social-networking website for prospective and existing immigrants to Canada. Founder and immigration lawyer David Cohen saw, according to the Toronto Star, "a need for a social networking site that uses common applications to create a worldwide chat room for people thinking of moving to Canada, people in the process of moving and people already [there]."

The aim is to connect new migrants both to native-born Canadians and to other immigrants in the country. Users can join communities based on common ties - like country of origin and occupation - and common interests - there are skiing and drama interest groups, for example.

From his experience in his own work with immigrants, Cohen observed that "those with contacts and support in Canada are better equipped to establish themselves than those who try to make it on their own."  Hence the establishment of the Loon Lounge, a site he calls, according to the Globe and Mail, "Facebook with a purpose". It is "the missing link - a tool to help people make connections and build a support system to help ease their transition into life in Canada...By facilitating communication and centralizing member information, the purpose of LoonLounge is to empower Canadian residents, immigrants, and potential immigrants with the knowledge we need to build a stronger Canada together." 

As of November 2009 the site had 30,000 members who use the site to network, learn about Canada, search for jobs, post events, and to access resources about settlement and citizenship in the country.

It's an excellent initiative - as Cohen told the Toronto Star, “I know our government means well, but their efforts are, well, oafish. The government can’t afford to answer one-on-one questions, they can’t help an engineer in Norway find someone in Toronto who can answer his question or tell someone in Greece where to find Toronto’s Greek neighbourhood.” His comments could as well apply to the Irish case as the Canadian.

www.loonlounge.com

This post was guest-edited by Eadaoin O'Sullivan. Colin Murphy is away.

According to figures released by the HSE and reported in the Irish Times on February 1st, 500 unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Ireland have gone missing from State care since 2000. 47 children went missing in 2007, according to Denis Naughten, Fine Gael's spokesman on immigration and integration.

Swiss charity Terre des Hommes released a report, also on February 1st, into the phenomenon of unaccompanied minors disappearing in four countries in the EU (download here). They found that up to half of foreign minors arriving in particular reception centres in Switzerland, Belgium, France and Spain disappear within 48 hours of admission. They say: "The disappearance of children from institutions is not a marginal or rare phenomenon: it is a variable but significant percentage of a given population which can reach 50% depending on the institutions or countries concerned."

One of the most decisive factors in the disappearance of these children, they say, is the fact of their being placed into State care in the first place: "Most minors (mainly boys between 14 and 17 years of age) perceive their future prospects once it is decided that they be placed in an institution. What does being placed and protected mean to minors who have often been through extreme hardships, who have been forced to reach a degree of adult maturity, and of whom it is required that they comply with the rules and regulations of an institution normally designed for younger minors? There is also their certainty, even if they are told otherwise, that this placement is the anteroom of eviction back to their country of origin, despite the fact that their projects are usually very clear and that they want to work in the host country."

Disturbingly, the Terre des Hommes report observes that, "the principle of actively searching for a minor who has disappeared from an institution is very rarely implemented, in contrast to the immediate search which is initiated when a national child disappears. This attitude could very easily be interpreted as discrimination."

In Ireland, the Ombudsman for Children's Office (OCO) recently released the results of their Separated Children Project (1), which ran from January to October 2009, and which aimed " to better understand the lives and level of care afforded to separated children in Ireland by hearing directly from them." The project resulted in a guidebook compiled by the 35 separated children who participated and a storybook setting out their stories, as well as a project report. (All are available for download here). The OCO report echoes the findings of Terre des Hommes, saying: "[The] large number of missing children is alarming as is the apparent lack of further investigation into incidents. Minister Barry Andrews stated earlier this year that, 'We wish to treat all unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the same way as all children in the State are treated.' Yet, the majority of missing separated children are not listed on the missing persons website."

The stories gathered as part of the Separated Children's project are frequently harrowing, and bring into sharp relief the need for the State to make every effort to ensure separated children who arrive in Ireland are well cared for and looked out for, and every effort is made to find those who go missing. The editors introduce the collection by saying, "We all make our own stories. But our stories also make us.  In their home places, these extraordinary children were unconsciously shaping their own stories with their families when dramatic events tore apart their lives. At that moment their stories began to shape them. They shaped them in ways they never imagined or wanted. Now, on these pages, and through this project, they have become their own stories’ tellers...These stories are sacred. And here is their airing. They are sacred to the children who own them. They are sacred to the children’s home countries. And now, whether we acknowledge it or not, they are sacred to Ireland. To each one of us who reads them. These are Irish stories too."

An extract:
"We came to Dublin Airport. I didn’t know it was Dublin then.  I had never known of Dublin. I had never known of Ireland. We got on a bus and into the city centre somewhere maybe and then he just left us...It was really cold. It was in October last year and we didn’t have jackets on us and we had just, yeah, a small bag with our few clothes and small things inside. We went in this big building. They got an interpreter for us. We was afraid and confused. My younger brother was talking because I couldn’t talk in that time ever since those things were happened to me in the past, when they tried raping me. That pains, the pain never stop. I couldn’t talk in that time because I was breathing too fast. My chest was very painful.
They are strange to me and I feel strange to them. I have nothing more to say. I finished saying, I’m just sad. It’s just hard for me, it’s really hard for me, and sometimes I feel like doing something bad but it is no way to go on. "

(1) Note: the OCO uses the word 'separated' rather than 'unaccompanied' because, they say, "This term is preferable to ‘unaccompanied’ because it better defines the problems that such children face. Namely, that they are without the care and protection of their parents or legal guardian and as a consequence suffer socially and psychologically from this separation. While some separated children appear to be accompanied when they arrive, the accompanying adults are not necessarily able or suitable to assume responsibility for their care."

This post was guest-edited by Eadaoin O'Sullivan. Colin Murphy is away.

Recent research by the US based Opportunity Agenda (www.opportunityagenda.org) (download here) looked into the utilisation of social media platforms - Facebook, Youtube, blogs and Twitter - by pro-immigration advocacy groups as well as the presence of content supportive of and sympathetic to immigrants and immigration in these fora.

They conducted a ten week scan of the sites above over the summer of 2009, and contrasted their findings with a similar scan conducted in 2007. They justify the research by saying, "In just a few short years, we have witnessed a transformation in the most popular technologies and uses of the Internet. That change, in turn, is reshaping the media landscape and the public discourse...For those who seek commonsense immigration reform and the integration of immigrants into our national community, a robust and positive experience on the social web is crucial. Because Americans of all walks of life increasingly use these sites to learn about issues and build relationships, the information they encounter will shape their views and influence the broader public’s perceptions."

Summarising their findings, they say: "We found an almost complete turnaround from the results of our last Web 2.0 scan conducted approximately two years ago. We saw positive developments on Facebook and YouTube, and we found progressive-leaning mainstream blogs to be a friendlier environment for pro-immigration discourse than just two years ago."

In 2007, the group found anti-immigrant groups outnumbering pro- by approximately two to one on Facebook. In 2009, searching for the keywords "immigration, immigrant, dream Act, Comprehensive Reform, amnesty, undocumented, and illegals" and limiting their analysis to groups with more than 100 members, they found 92 immigrant related Facebook groups, of which 76 had a pro-immigrant message (note: it is unclear from the methodology section if they were just searching within US networks or globally - it seems likely, given the small numbers involved, it was only within the US. A quick search of Facebook for 'immigration+America', 'Common Interest' groups with the subtype 'Beliefs and Causes' threw up 146 groups in February 2010, which would suggest Opportunity Agenda used something like this methodology, though they do not specify). Of 15 fan pages scanned, 11 had a pro-immigrant message.

They point out that the most successful groups on Facebook (measured by number of members) were those related to advocating for the passage of the DREAM (Development, Relief and Education for Minors) Act. They speculate that, "An important reason for this was the ability of these groups to consistently update their content and have active members routinely post information and news related to the DREAM Act... Members often need to see the vibrancy of a group before they will participate. Once they do, these members’ networks see this activity and learn of the group. It is this cycle, we believe, that led to much of the success seen by these groups."

On Youtube, they found content that was supportive of immigrants and immigration slightly outnumbering content that was anti-immigration, although they do note that many of the comments under videos they categorised as 'pro-immigration' were "laden with offensive, anti-immigration rhetoric".

Looking at a list of the top 100 blogs on Technorati (globally rated), the researchers chose "the first 10 that consistently covered issues of political relevance...The Huffington Post, Think Progress, DailyKos, the Daily Dish, the CNN Political Ticker, Michelle Malkin, The Caucus of The New York Times, Gawker, Pajama Media, and TreeHugger." They say that, " only the progressive blogs we monitored (such as The Huffington Post, DailyKos, and Think Progress) discussed immigration topics on a consistent basis. More conservative blogs (Pajama Media and Michelle Malkin) blogged less than five times each on the topic of immigration throughout our 10-week scan and mainly in response to what was popular in immigration news at [that] moment." Despite this, their conclusions are upbeat: "Blogs continue to increase in popularity...In comparison to our scan two years ago, the progress that pro-immigrant voices have made in this space is striking."

On Twitter, they found that amongst those users who tweet frequently on immigration issues, pro-immigration voices are predominant.

Their final conclusion is optimistic, in particular with regard to the success of pro-immigrant voices in the social media sphere in the US, and their yoking of social media tools to their cause. They advise: "It is not enough for us to simply create content for these technologies. We must take advantage of the freedom inherent in these tools. The technology allows us to be precise about how we frame our argument....This is an opportunity to produce and present our content unfiltered. The findings of this report show a promising start, but we must not relinquish our current lead. The social web is wildly popular and we have no reason to believe that will change. We must use it to our advantage."

This post was guest-edited by Eadaoin O'Sullivan. Colin Murphy is away.

Congolese musician Niwel Tsumbu and his Song of the Nations band are touring Ireland throughout February and March. The guitarist has been described by the Irish Times as having "an almost hyper-articulate ability to fuse and sunder, meld and saturate his music with naturally kinetic African rhythms, jazz improvisation and the most disciplined flamenco guitar imaginable."

The Song of Nations band is "a truly multicultural line up" made up of Hungarian bassist Peter Erdei, Irish percussionist Eamonn Cagney, violinist Kathryn Doehner from Germany and Cuban percussionist Frailan Moran Mendive.

Tsumbu's latest album, Song of the Nations, was released to rave reviews last April (again from the Irish Times: "Tsumbu’s confident juxtaposition of clarinet and guitar, insistent percussion and declamatory vocals trace a path that’s all his own...the final, hidden track...hollers from the mountaintop: its tribal rhythms and transcendent male harmonies declare Tsumbu’s intention to carve a niche nobody else has even dreamt of.")

Tsumbu arrived in Cork from the Congo in 2004, and has played with a number of different groups since then, including the Dublin based Detached group, the Niwel Tsumbu Duo, Sumu and the Clear Sky Ensemble, and has toured extensively, featuring on the bill at such diverse events as the Electric Picnic, the Festival of World Cultures and the Cork Jazz Festival.

He has studied both African music and jazz, and those influences fuse in his work. As Rootsworld puts it, "rich Lingala roots merge with jazz, classical and popular music in an acoustic tour de force of rhythm, melody and tight, terse vocals."

Niwel Tsumbu and Song of the Nations play St John's Arts Centre, Kerry, on 11th February. For more tour details see here.

This post was guest-edited by Eadaoin O'Sullivan. Colin Murphy is away.

The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe  - recently published and described as a collection of autobiographical essays, is only loosely the latter. As Geoff Wisner, writing in the Christian Science Monitor, says, "Of the 16 essays and speeches included here, the most directly autobiographical – 'My Dad and Me' and 'My Daughters' – are among the briefest."

Wisner goes on: "If The Education of a British-Protected Child doesn’t tell us much that is new about Achebe’s life, it does tell us a lot about his views on other matters." As The New York Times puts it, "In this book he tangles further, and profitably, with the obsessions that have defined his career: colonialism, identity, family, the uses and abuses of language."

Particularly interesting is a reprint of Achebe's essay 'Africa's Tarnished Name', (originally published in 2000), itself an extended version of a 1975 essay on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness titled 'Images of Africa'. That latter is a bitter analysis of what Achebe argues is Conrad's intense racism in Heart of Darkness and the lasting legacy of that writer's (quoting F.R. Leavis) "adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery" in describing the continent.

Achebe: "In the final consideration his method amounts to no more than a steady, ponderous, fake-ritualistic repetition of two antithetical sentences, one about silence and the other about frenzy. We can inspect samples of this on pages 36 and 37 of the present edition: a) it was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention and b) The steamer toiled along slowly on the edge of a black and incomprehensible frenzy. Of course there is a judicious change of adjective from time to time, so that instead of inscrutable, for example, you might have unspeakable, even plain mysterious, etc., etc."

In 'Africa's Tarnished Name' Achebe observes, "It is a great irony of history and geography that Africa, whose land mass is closer than any other to the mainland of Europe, should come to occupy in European psychological disposition the farthest point of otherness, should indeed become Europe's very antithesis."

He argues that Europe's perception of the alienness and otherness of Africa "was in general a deliberate invention" whose purpose was to allow, first, for the slave trade, and second, for the colonisation of the continent. The 'derogatory images' of Africa generated by this perception of alienness, he says, "gave the world a literary tradition that is now, happily, defunct, but also a particular way of looking (or rather not looking) at Africa and Africans that endures, alas, into our own day."

Achebe was writing in 2000, but 'our own day' as well describes 2010. A Google news search for 'africa "dark continent"' turns up four pages of results from just the past month - many, it is true, along the lines of "Some people still see Africa as 'the dark continent...", but indicative, despite their jaundiced tone, of the persistence of the myth given its literary imprimatur by Conrad.

While slightly hyperbolic, Rod Chavis in 'Africa in the Western Media' gives a good summary of this legacy: “Nouns and adjectives like hut, dark, tribe, King Kong, tribalism, primitive, nomad, animism, jungle, cannibal, savage, underdeveloped, third world, developing, etc., are pervasive when Africa is the story. Images of Africa in the Western Media, many times, are deeply troubling psychologically and emotionally, especially to those claiming her as primordial heritage, lineage, and descendancy. They portray a no there there: no culture, no history, no tradition, and no people, an abyss and negative void.

“With the stroke of a journalist's pen, the African, her continent, and her descendants are pejoratively reduced to nothing (but)… a bastion of disease, savagery, animism, pestilence, war, famine, despotism, primitivism, poverty, and ubiquitous images of children, flies in their food and faces, their stomachs distended. These "universal" but powerfully subliminal message units, beamed at global television audiences, connote something not good, perennially problematic unworthiness, deplorability, black, foreboding, loathing, sub humanity, etc.”

While the Western media's confused and flat-footed approach to describing events and life on the African continent is hardly news, this collection of essays is worthwhile both for the historical overview of European narratives of Africa it offers, and for the blade concealed within Achebe's scholarly tone, one which methodically (and sometimes savagely) deconstructs these narratives.

And although many of the essays in The Education of a British-Protected Child are a decade or more old, and the subjects they deal with many decades older, they still remain (incredibly, depressingly) relevant.  In 'Spelling Our Proper Name' Achebe writes, “The telling of the story of black people in our time, and for a considerable period before, has been the self-appointed responsibility of white people, and they have mostly done it to suit a white purpose, naturally….So much psychological, political and, economic interest is vested in the negative image.”

This is not the whole truth, of course, but the following elegant passage (from 'Images of Africa') gives a good summation of Europe's difficulty in 'storying' Africa: "As I said earlier Conrad did not originate the image of Africa which we find in his book. It was and is the dominant image of Africa in the Western imagination and Conrad merely brought the peculiar gifts of his own mind to bear on it. For reasons which can certainly use close psychological inquiry the West seems to suffer deep anxieties about the precariousness of its civilization and to have a need for constant reassurance by comparison with Africa. If Europe, advancing in civilization, could cast a backward glance periodically at Africa trapped in primordial barbarity it could say with faith and feeling: There go I but for the grace of God. Africa is to Europe as the picture is to Dorian Gray - a carrier onto whom the master unloads his physical and moral deformities so that he may go forward, erect and immaculate."

This post was guest-edited by Eadaoin O'Sullivan. Colin Murphy is away.